I can't get over how all the Left Liberal critics of Obama masterfully co-opted by Karl Rove in 2009 cannot distinguish between bombing someone and the media all collaborating with the military to say that your going to bomb someone you have absolutely no intention of bombing under any circumstances.
Astonishing. Truly astonishing.
And then they wonder why they ALWAYS lose...
You people are also solely and completely responsible for utterly poisoning the well of 9/11 Truth with the official CIA default fault-back excuse of BLOWBACK.....
"It's our fault, but we didn't mean for it to happen.... It's just unintended consequence..!"
Chomsky Jumps the Shark (Again) - This is what he actually believes (deep breath...)
On the morning :of September 11, 2001, 19 men armed with boxcutters directed by a man on dialysis in a cave fortress halfway around the world using a satellite phone and a laptop directed the most sophisticated penetration of the most heavily-defended airspace in the world, overpowering the passengers and the military combat-trained pilots on 4 commercial aircraft before flying those planes wildly off course for over an hour without being molested by a single fighter interceptor.
These 19 hijackers, devout religious fundamentalists who liked to drink alcohol, snort cocaine, and live with pink-haired strippers, managed to knock down 3 buildings with 2 planes in New York, while in Washington a pilot who couldn’t handle a single engine Cessna was able to fly a 757 in an 8,000 foot descending 270 degree corskscrew turn to come exactly level with the ground, hitting the Pentagon in the budget analyst office where DoD staffers were working on the mystery of the 2.3 trillion dollars that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had announced “missing” from the Pentagon’s coffers in a press conference the day before, on September 10, 2001.
Luckily, the news anchors knew who did it within minutes, the pundits knew within hours, the Administration knew within the day, and the evidence literally fell into the FBI’s lap. But for some reason a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists demanded an investigation into the greatest attack on American soil in history.
The investigation was delayed, underfunded, set up to fail, a conflict of interest and a cover up from start to finish.
It was based on testimony extracted through torture, the records of which were destroyed. It failed to mention the existence of WTC7, Able Danger, Ptech, Sibel Edmonds, OBL and the CIA, and the drills of hijacked aircraft being flown into buildings that were being simulated at the precise same time that those events were actually happening.
It was lied to by the Pentagon, the CIA, the Bush Administration and as for Bush and Cheney…well, no one knows what they told it because they testified in secret, off the record, not under oath and behind closed doors.
It didn’t bother to look at who funded the attacks because that question is of “little practical significance“.
Still, the 9/11 Commission did brilliantly, answering all of the questions the public had (except most of the victims’ family members’ questions) and pinned blame on all the people responsible (although no one so much as lost their job), determining the attacks were “a failure of imagination” because “I don’t think anyone could envision flying airplanes into buildings ” except the Pentagon and FEMA and NORAD and the NRO.
The DIA destroyed 2.5 TB of data on Able Danger, but that’s OK because it probably wasn’t important.
The SEC destroyed their records on the investigation into the insider trading before the attacks, but that’s OK because destroying the records of the largest investigation in SEC history is just part of routine record keeping.
NIST has classified the data that they used for their model of WTC7′s collapse, but that’s OK because knowing how they made their model of that collapse would “jeopardize public safety“.
The FBI has argued that all material related to their investigation of 9/11 should be kept secret from the public, but that’s OK because the FBI probably has nothing to hide.
This man never existed, nor is anything he had to say worthy of your attention, and if you say otherwise you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist and deserve to be shunned by all of humanity. Likewise him, him, him, and her. (and her and her and him).
Osama Bin Laden lived in a cave fortress in the hills of Afghanistan, but somehow got away.
Then he was hiding out in Tora Bora but somehow got away.
Then he lived in Abottabad for years, taunting the most comprehensive intelligence dragnet employing the most sophisticated technology in the history of the world for 10 years, releasing video after video with complete impunity (and getting younger and younger as he did so), before finally being found in a daring SEAL team raid which wasn’t recorded on video, in which he didn’t resist or use his wife as a human shield, and in which these crack special forces operatives panicked and killed this unarmed man, supposedly the best source of intelligence about those dastardly terrorists on the planet.
Then they dumped his body in the ocean before telling anyone about it. Then a couple dozen of that team’s members died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
This is the very essence of Ron Paul's Snake Oil act - that anything we do beyond our own borders (economic aid, the Marshall Plan, Peacekeeping, Camp David Accords....) .... ALL bad, de facto, and WILL lead to awful, horrible things happening in the future that ensure total disaster unless we do absolutely nothing. Ever.
Except buy things. And station the entire US Army along the Mexico border to keep out the human price of our ECONOMIC Blowback....
Which is actually EXACTLY what he wants to do - it was in his Presidential platform.
But the problem isn't the foreign wars per se, it's the size and all-consuming greed of the military.
You know, they were ACTUALLY putting out the story on 9/11 that a plane had crashed at or near Camp David - with the immediate, instant explanation on EVERY newsreaders lips that this spoke to the reason for this ferocious assault - because, as every newsreader automatically knows (without having to be told), 9/11 was the anniversary of the Camp David Accords.
Because, if there's one aspect of US interventionism that will REALLY stoke up murderous hatred, it's brokering a historic peace deal between two intractable sworn enemies....
Of course, if you are thinking in terms of anniversary-based revenge attacks, it's shocking to suppose that the first suspects for such a blowback-motivated strike wouldn't be Leftist Chilean Guerillas.
Webster Tarpley awarded Ward Churchill his Arlen Spector Award for Most Imaginative Defence of the Official Story of 9/11.
It runs like this : "If you are skeptical of the Official Story, you're an anti-arab racist because you are saying that Arabs are not capable of achieving great things."
This is meat and drink to the American Fascists and its based on bad information that isn't true.
"1991 US "surgical" bombing of [ Iraq's ] water purification and sewage facilities, as well as other "infrastructural" targets upon which Iraq's civilian population depends for its very survival.
... this sort of "aerial warfare" constitutes a Class I Crime Against humanity, entailing myriad gross violations of international law, as well as every conceivable standard of "civilized" behavior -- the death toll has been steadily ratcheted up by US-imposed sanctions for a full decade now. Enforced all the while by a massive military presence and periodic bombing raids, the embargo has greatly impaired the victims' ability to import the nutrients, medicines and other materials necessary to saving the lives of even their toddlers.
All told, Iraq has a population of about 18 million. The 500,000 kids lost to date thus represent something on the order of 25 percent of their age group. ... In effect, an entire generation has been obliterated."
But again - Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11, and if Susan Lindhauer is correct, worked with the Good Guys in the CIA in the CIA, State Dept. and US Mission to the United Nations to prevent it from happening.
Here, Ward Churchill vindicates the Big Lie built over the Bigger Lie - that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 and that by invading Iraq that somehow, in some way, is an act of pre-emotive counterterrorism.
None of that is true.
"As for those in the World Trade Center... Well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent?
Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire - the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved - and they did so both willingly and knowingly.
Recourse to "ignorance" - a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" - counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in - and in many cases excelling at - it was because of their absolute refusal to see.
More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants.
If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it."
Except that none of those guys came to work that day.
To the extent that anyone DID verifiably work in, and die in the WTC that day (which is severely open to serious question), it wasn't the employees of AIG, Kroll International or Kissinger and Associates - it was the minimum wage Janitors, the Maintanence Staff and the guys who worked in the kitchen of the International House of Pancakes on the 102nd Floor.
So here we see Churchill constructing a Neo-Marxist Straw Man Arguement that the Iraq War is immoral and unjustifiable because those people were callously evil and deserved to die anyway - sidestepping the core issue of the Big Lie we all sidestepped for years -
"Are we sure those people actually died?"
The answer you eventually arrive at, only years later after years of careful study of the event and re-examination of the record is - categorically, no.
It's highly unlikely that anything more than a handful of (largely troublesome) people actually died that day in the events we all thought we were witnessing on live television.
Ward Churchill vindicates the Big Lie that there were Jumpers, that "We were Attacked" and that Muslims did it for understandable Islamist reasons that are perfectly rational and understandable from their point of view.
None of this is true.
Again, to be clear : anyone reading the text of Usama Bin Laden's 1996 and 1998 fatwas will be hard pressed to agree with them or admit that his grievances are justifiable and his demands reasonable; namely -
The pressence of US Military Forces stationed on the Arabian Peninsular, occupying the lands originally conquered by The Prophet during his lifetime as the original Caliphate and protectorate, the birthplace and homeland of Islam is a humiliating insult and religiously offensive.
The House of Saud must bear the responsibility for surrendering control of Muslim Holy Lands to foreign occupies; the foreign crusaders must be made to leave peacefully
US moral and material support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine is a daily war crime, a genocidal crime against humanity and a crime against peace. US Support for the Apartheid State of Israel in its genocidal internal and foreign policy must cease.
Those are understandable grievances, simple and modest demands and I agree with all of them.
If those are the values of the Mythical Al-Qaeda Beast, then I am al-Qaeda, and proudly so.
But that has nothing to do with Iraq.
In my statement earlier, "You people" is presumed Democrats and the American Left.
If that even exists any more.
The US is not going to War with Syria and it didn't go to war with Libya.
NATO took military action over Libya under UN auspices; the entire international community (including Russia and China) signed on for it.
Obama has ENDED two wars and started none.
What you claim simply is not true.
Also, Johnson also invaded the Dominican Republic.
And Reagan invaded A LOT more countries than that....
The Iraq War and the Afghan War are, or have both ended on his watch.
The second of those being the longest war in American history. Longer than Vietnam.
The ONLY reason he hasn't pulled out completely is because he's far less wreck less than Nixon and Kissinger, pulling the rug out from under the dependant parties and brokering a negotiated settlement between the Karzai Government (of drug traffickers and criminals) and the Taliban (who are not, and also happen to live there.
It's quite a mess. But then, the Khemer Rouge and the Killing Fields of Cambodia were ENTIRELY your fault, so it's worth making sure you get it right.
It's only under his watch, once the genocidal mass killers like McCrystal and Petreaus have been got out of the field that the US has begun direct negotiations with the Taliban.
You should have done that in 1998.
They were actually prepared to hand over Bin Laden, detained him and held him for a court hearing relating to the African Embassy bombings and were prepared to hand him over as soon as the US handed over proof that he was criminally responsible - they did no such thing. Apparently, they DID send a dossier of "evidence", but the legal scholars amongst them took one look at what they had, said "this is complete crap" and threw the case out.
As you see, my point about the American Fascists just lapping this up is well-made.
Thankfully, there will never be anywhere close to enough votes for any kind of action; and even if there were, it's Commander in Chief who tells the Pentagon what to hit and when.
And he's never going to agree to that.
And thankfully, neither would Biden, so that drastically reduces the risk to him personally in continuing to say "No.", and meaning it.
Whatever else you might think about this President, this is undeniably true;
He's not going to to cluster bomb the suburbs of Damascus , take out a couple of presumed chemical weapons dumps and kill hundreds of civilian living nearby just to save face.
As Michael Hastings told us, the Generals and Pentagon Brass undertook a full-scale foreign policy bum-rush on Obama right at the start of his first term, with the sole intention of getting a further decade-long commitment to counterinsurgency guerrilla war in Afghanistan and they boxed him in on all sides, offering Jo the poisoned chalice if the Afghan troop surge to "deal with the problem as quickly as possible" to ensure the Kabul Government inherits the best possible situation with regards to security.
He knows damn well that was the worst mistake of his first term, they ganged up on him and sucker-punched him before he had an opportunity to find his feet in the office, and he will NEVER let himself be intimidated into towing the Pentagon's policy, rather than ORDERING them to do what he tells them to do, when he tells them to do it.
Wasn't it Netanyahu who fully pressed into the narrative if this whole "Red Line" nonsense...? Others, I know, had raided it before, but made no headway in terms of pinning Obama down on where this ridiculous and arbitrary line in the sand actually was, from what I can recall.
Bibi's popped up a couple of times asking "Red Line..? Red Line, yet...?" Only to be told firmly "No" on each occasion...
Oh, yeah.... Because now there's a Red Line for violating the UN Charter and disregarding all international law, after which its just unavoidable, necessary and just.
Only an Israeli could be so crass.
Which does raise an interesting question - if the use of chemical weapons us bad, and of Syria's neighbours, the Israelis probably DO have valid concerns about their use and the likelihood that they could be stolen or sold to other non-stare actors across the whole region....
...then why don't the Israelis attack the supposed chemical weapons dumps themselves, and unilaterally...?
For once on this occasion, they actually have a somewhat valid claim to feeling threatened by these things staying around for the foreseeable future.
It's not like them to be shy with the Air Strikes... What gives?
Have the entire IDF turned suddenly gay....?
Those White Phosphorus incendiay rounds are Made in USA, by the way.
And unlike Syria, the US and Israel HAVE signed the Geneva Convention accords banning the use of Chemical weapons, WHITE PHOSPHORUS SPECIFICALLY....
Even if Assad were guilty, there is no moral or legal basis for holding Syria to account against an international law they took a measured policy decision not to confine themselves to.
Dropping white phosphorus on children though is unambiguously illegal and a War Crime.
Except, it's Israel, so it isn't. That's how these things work, it seems....
That's not the case. He's in total agreement with you because he THINKS Obama wants to do this, and he THINKS this is the way to do damage to him.
The Diaries of Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair's Press Secretary, detail exactly the same dialogue and thinking on Kosovo (which, again, Obama and Clinton WILL have discussed in detail - unlike Clinton himself at the time, Obama (like Kennedy) speaks frequently and at length with his predecessors to get advice and poll their opinion before acting on major issues of war and peace and avoid their mistakes, which is why he hasn't been impeached (yet) and October Surprise 2012 was successfully thwarted by James Clapper, making him now subject to a vendetta from the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainmenr Complex, who have since tried to destroy him.
Kosovo and Syria today are practically identical scenarios, only without the Mossad Cell inside the Cabinet this time (Madeline Albright and William Cohen, with an honourable mention going out to Ambassador Barbara Bodine, over in Yemen at that point).
As Secretary of State, Albright was an absolute blood-drenched War Hawk, architect of the criminal Rambouillet Talks, which made the Munich Agreement look like a love-in; the fact that she PERSONALLY took the side of, advised and actively intervened on the side of the KLA (who don't even qualify as terrorists, since they have no ideology, they were just bandits and muggers, armed by the Germans, supplied by the CIA and trained by the SAS), a nominally Muslim group of armed separatists to illegally annex the spiritual homeland of the Serbian nation ("Kosovo is our Jerusalem") was bad enough - when she (according to multiple accounts) advised them that it would require reports of a major Serb atrocity or obvious War Crime in the province (there weren't any) before international opinion could be swung in favour of intervention on the side of the KLA, they just went right out and faked one.
The "Massacre" at Račak was an almost carbon copy template for this Syrian gas attack; what had actually happened was that the guerrillas had scared away the local population of the village of Raçak with their constant violence and intimidation and so got themselves an empty village; at the time, armed Serb Security Police had been deployed to restore order and deal with the heavily armed Special Forces-trained Albanian bandits running around kidnapping and ransoming people and burning villages, raping and pillaging.
The exact ordering of events is unclear, but the overall picture is absolutely indisputable - the KLA had an empty village, Serb Security forces in the area to provoke and an international audience - a team of UN Observers had just arrived on the ground the day before, and set up base around 5 miles away from Račak; the team was led by a former State Dept diplomat assigned to Central America and Nicaragua during the mid-80s - a gentlemen, therefore, well acquainted with massacres and US-sponsored Death Squads.
All they needed now were the bodies.
The exact details for this are EXTREMELY sketchy for obvious reasons - suffice it to say, by the time the UN team heard "there's been a massacre by the Serbs over the the hill in Račak", the dead people they found lying all over the place were not lying where they originally fell, but more crucially, they were not wearing the same clothes they had on when they were shot dead.
What APPEARS to have happened is that the KLA bandits arranged a massive ambush by luring the Serb Police into the village before launching an all-out frontal assault. The guerrillas were armed and equipped with (Brand new, German) tactical gear, the Serb Police had in many cases World War II vintage equipment and gear - either they killed everyone or forced the Serbs to withdraw - the KLA then hauled all of their own dead (and probably many of the Serb dead, too) back into the centre of town from where they had died, taking cover..... And redressed the corpses to remove their military fatigues and dress them in civilian clothes.
They then just left them strewn all over the street in plain site.
When the UN Observation team, with journalists in tow arrived in the village square, they found thirty or forty dead bodies in civilian clothes lying all over the street (and possibly the odd wailing old woman for added verisimilitude).
A few of the reporters at the time (not many) noted with puzzlement that:
A) All the dead appeared to be males of fighting age, which was rather odd,
B) It seemed in many cases that even when the people had bullet holes in them, their clothes didn't,
C) By no means all of them appeared to be ethnically Albanian
D) The one thing almost instantly associated in most people's minds with massacres and War Crimes in general tends inevitably to be mass graves; to carry out the massacre of an entire (all male) community whist there were UN Observers just 5 miles away is, to say the least, ballsy....
To imagine that the Serb Police might be so caviller as to not even bother to BURY them is, to say the least, a bit of a stretch....
After the 77 day long war (NATO's First), 3 international commissions re-examined the "Massacre" at Račak - two of them concluded that the KLA had staged this tableau, and the EU report has never been made public.
The reason NATO went to war with Serbia was because as a non-state actor, it's not bound by the UN or by Security Council resolutions; military action against a sovereign nation and member state in response to internal violence and unrest is a violation of the UN Charter and of the Nuremberg Protocols; it is, according to the Chief Prosecutor at Nuremberg,
"not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
And thus Russia and China veto these things in the Security Council. Knowing that they could be next. But also, because its absolutely and totally illegal. And they're right.
But you saw this same talk coming from the Europeans, specifically the Anglo-French axis, the old Suez, Sykes-Picot Lobby - the primary, dispicable war hawk from my country is Mr William Hague, who had openly been calling someone ELSE, other that Bashar Assad "President" (someone who NO ONE in Syria has EVER elected to ANYTHING....) and if he was any tighter with NATO Command, he'd be internal.
He's the one, now, who's been talking again about NATO action against Syria to circumvents the UN, as was the case in Kosovo; NATO intervention over Libya was authorised on a strictly limited basis by the Security Council, in Kosovo it wasn't and the current attempt to pass a clone of Resolution 1973 to authorise actions over Syria "to protect civilians" will not work - after all, the Free Syrian Army are civilians, al-Nusra are civilians, Hezzbolah are civilians.... And the Syrian Army are all conscripts, not professional soldiers.
But the votes will never be there on the NATO North Atlantic Council for this (they need 15 counties to sign on, they don't have them) and Russia and China will block everything in the UN that breaches the UN Charter. Fortunately.
But the point is, don't fall for the US Media's double lie that
A) America is the main player, here, or
B) Obama wants to do this.
Because neither of those things are true, they are not anywhere close to being true and are prima face nonsense.
Clinton eventually caved into pressure to act over Kosovo in the immediate aftermath of Račak, not realising what Albright had done; but it was the constant shuttle diplomacy and lobbying from Tony Blair that made the difference, playing Clinton like a harp from Hell - one line he kept hammering Clinton on (2 months after his impeachment trial) was "This is a moral crisis, and a moral issue", and working on convincing Sandy Berger (who, like Clinton, was far more sensible and more of an honest broker, and therefore more of a dove)
Clinton remarked that the Republicans in Congress would probably support military action, even ground troops in Kosovo "because it might destroy me".
He was right then, and it's right now, applied to Obama and the Syrian situation - he will NOT allow them to box him in...
The added difference is that War Guilt over previous miscalculations concerning the Peacekeeping intervention in Bosnia, ultimately leading to Srebriniza, had put Cinton's Left Liberal base FIRMLY on the side of hard and decisive "humanitarian" intervention.
It was indeed Alistair Campbell who coined the phrase "Humanitarian Bombing", and indeed Number 10 loaned him out to Solana and Wesley Clark to sort out their absolutely dire PR presentation of a disaterously incompetent and immoral war for unclear objectives.
As recently as 2008, Hilary Clinton was still touting the awful, stinking mess of the Kosovo War as an example of positive and decisive US intervention - those who now still remember it, post-9/11 know that absolutely NONE of that is true - it was a war fought for the cause of German NeoLiberalism to destroy progressive Socialist and intimidate the Russian Federation, justified by a Genocide that wasn't happening in support of criminal bandits who like trafficking in heroin and Russian women.
The end product was a Mafia microstate that acts as a clearing house and money laundering centre as well as an unguarded and unregulated port of entry for hard drugs, Mafia money and human flesh (stolen organs AND people) - policed at the expense of EU Taxpayers (under the undoubtably corrupt EULEX Police force), even though neither Kosovo or Serbia (Kosovo IS Serbia) are members if the EU and Kosovo, by its nature, doesn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell of ever getting in.
But again, the dynamic is completely different here - in 1999, Clinton's base were clamouring for "Humanitarian" Intervention - that isn't the case here.
The exact opposite is true.
NO-ONE, apart from the Conservative War Hawks and the ENTIRITY of the US Media wants this to happen or is demanding in any sense that it SHOULD happen.
Rather unsurprisingly, McCain took exactly the same stance in 1999 and used it to leverage his "Maverick" status in the 2000 Primaries...
Current UN Ambassador Samantha Power, by the way, considers Kosovo to have been an extremely successful "humanitarian" intervention....
Yeah. Except for bringing the world to the brink of World War III....
She obviously has never heard of the Incident at Prestina Airport...
While it may be gross oversimplification, the Fool Chomsky is indeed correct to point out
"Vietnam was a war entirely created by Liberals"
Although, he was still locked into thinking of Lyndon Johnson as being a Liberal.
But it is true - the Eastern Establishment and the Ivy League Georgetown set saw US involvement as an altruistic humanitarian intervention is support of a small nation's struggle for self-determination against Communist expansion, subversion and infiltration - never mind that the Thai Communist Party was FAR more popular and endemic that the NLF in South Vietnam, even in the early stages of the Counterinsurgency effort - the just ignored them, pretended that they weren't there and they just went away.
John Kennedy, who had brains, saw the futility of fighting an invisible enemy who could be anyone, so they took his head.
This guy claims to have been a close friend to Bobby Kennedy, believe It or not (I no longer do).
And people who say this simple truth (there aren't many of us), have been KILLED for saying it.
If you want to talk Red Lines, here's one:
You do not get to make favourable comparisons between the current President and Jack Kennedy.
Even when such comparisons are absolutely accurate and valid - that is a capital offence in the eyes of the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Complex - a term Hastings coined, before being killed by it. In plain site. Even Fox News struggled half heartedly to make the case that this WASN'T a political assassination.
https://vimeo.com/73586984
I would go even further - Obama isn't merely AS good overall when it comes to taming the raging beast of the military-industrial national security state, as compared to Jack Kennedy...
He's actually done way, WAY *better* in as much as he has successfully managed, for almost 5 whole years now, to successfully reign in all the foreign wars and effectively end US imperialist adventurism oversea while bringing almost all the troops home and avoid both his own death and any MAJOR provoking false flag incidents (although the Abumutalleb came close) - he hasn't been assassinated (despite several close shaves and warning shots, he chose his Vice President WELL in that regard, he learnt from his initial mistake of being boxed in by the Generals on the Afghan surge in 2009 and he successfully rolled back at least one serious and organised attempt at an October Surprise military Coup.
And I know that's not the most popular thing to say, and even you left Liberals and ex-radicals are going to think I've gone absolutely nuts;
But then I don't watch American television, and I have spent the last 5 years paying VERY close attention to where Karl Rove is, who he is speaking and what he is doing.
Karl Rove's philosophy of politics is not to attack an enemy's weaknesses, but ALWAYS attack them on their perceived strengths - which is why Obama takes the worst hits from Left Liberals who apparently can't do the arithmetic to figure out that 2-300 deaths via targeted drone strike is a preferable human rights and moral calculation than 6,717 US servicemen killed outright since 2001, 125,303 (approx) CONFIRMED Iraqi deaths due to violence and God alone knows how many in Afghanistan....
Drones save lives - that needs saying.
It's well known that Jack Kennedy had enormous respect and admiration for Special Forces; the Green Berets were the Predator UAV's of their day.
Both Kennedy and Obama recognise that the National Interest and National Security, as well as America's reputation and good name around the world is best served by killing the fewest innocent civilians in poor nations as possible.
This informed the whole philosophy of the Vietnam war, during the "Advisors" stage in the Kennedy Era; teach to ARVN Forces how to fight a counterinsurgency campaign, make then self-sufficient in that function and then get out; drones fulfil the same function - if local conditions do not allow you to arrest the high-value individual, don't risk a special forces incursion, get a human agent to meet with him, place a radio transceiver or radioisotope marker on him for the Hellfire targeting system to lock onto and whack him.
The only other options to achieve the same outcome are FAR worse; Do Nothing, Special Forces Raid, Air Strike, Cruise Missile Strike or Full Scale Invasion and Occupation.
If we take the position that Do Nothing is certainly not a viable option by the time it reaches the President's desk, it's not a difficult decision to make - and a large portion of the President's role, since day one has been and will always be, deciding to have men killed on behalf of the Federal Government; it's a pre-requisite of running for office, and ONLY Jimmy Carter has assumed office and taken the moral choice NOT to exercise that power....
Although.... He could have commuted Gary Gilmore's death sentence....
Oh: and this was ENTIRELY their fault, as well.
The real global crisis of Women's Rights and rape culture during the 1990s and 2000s was not in the Arab world or Afghanistan (where rape is practically unheard of);
It was (and is) in the US Military, in all services, at all levels - the Taliban actually had a numerically BETTER record at detecting, catching and punishing rapists than the Pentagon during the exact same period.
But then the Left don't understand the military, so they don't know about it.
http://spikethenews.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/myths-of-war-on-terror-look-at-way-they.html
